R: Comments required ... please : )

Jim Grossman wrote:

> (Comments interspersed between original text.)
> It has a quite complex nominal and verbal morphology, but it's
> much simpler than Latin or Greek. Vaiysi has inherited from
> Suimeni, its mother tounge, an ergative / absolutive case
> system. This means that the subject of intransitive verbs (verbs
> which can take the object) is marked for a case called ergative,
> and that the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of
> transitive verbs are generally unmarked, in a case called
> absolutive.   Vaiysi has four other cases: dative, genitive,
> locative and allative.
>
> (Okay.)
> Dative is the case of the indirect object (I give you the book) or
> of the object in  antipassive constructions, genitive resembles
> English 's, locative carries the meaning 'in' or 'on', while
> allative 'to' or 'into'.
> (Could locative also mean "at"?)
Yes, probably. I could bear the meaning of Latin 'apud'.

> Adjectives are usually declined as nouns, and adverbs are
> directly deviced by adjectival stems.
> (Do you mean that adjectives take the same endings as their
> associated nouns?   I like this;  it's simple.   I assume you've
> got adjectival nouns.)
I'm not sure about it. The problem is that I'd like to add the case mark
only at the end of every noun phrase, but I'm not sure about this. For
istance:

hyenis             lyaures    loudam
beautiful.ERG girl.ERG love.1s
a beautiful girl loves me

*OR SIMPLY*

hyeni         lyaures     loudam
beautiful.0 girl.ERG love.1s
a beautiful girl loves me?

> (I'm assuming that you mean that adjectives are derived from
> adjectives by omitting the flexional endings.)
If you meant that *adverbs* are derived from adjectives by omitting the
flexional endings, you're wrong. I think I'm going to add to the adjectival
stem a particle as English -ly. That's what i meant when I said that adv.s
are deviced from adjectival stem. I didn't explain it well probably because
the
language is always in a messy state... : )

> Vaiysi verb conjugation is another quiet complex argument.
> Verbs distinguish tense, person, number, aspect and voice, and
> their conjugation is as difficult as that of French or Italian
> verbs, far more difficult than the English one. Vaiysi has five
> tenses: present, past, future, anterior and posterior, plus an
> imperative mood. A particular construction is that of the verb
> 'to be', which has become in Vaiysi a suffixed particle
> (-yeam...)
>
> (Please explain the anterior and posterior tenses.)
Already done in another mail.

>
> The language is largerly SVO, but the word order is not very
> rigid. There are only prepositions, not potpositions; all
> prepositions govern the genitive case.
>
> I'm waiting for your reply.
>
> Luca
>
> (So far so good.)
>
> (Jim)
Thank you.

Luca
>